Description
Book SynopsisAn English edition of Radomir Konstantinovic's most celebrated and reviled book. First published in Belgrade in 1969, it attracted controversy through its unsparing critique of nationalism in Yugoslavia and beyond. This is a book that seems to age in reverse, as its meanings become deeper and more universal with the passage of time.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction by Branislav Jakovljevic: The Drone of Dialectics: On Provincialism and Deprovincialization
-
The Philosophy of Parochialism by Radomir Konstantinovic
- In Lieu of an Introduction: Style, the Highest Principle of Parochialism
- The Ideal of Pure Poverty
- The Spirit of Parochialism as the Spirit of a Tribe in Agony
- Province, the Theater of Normativity
- Absence of Tragedy: Sentimentalism and Sarcasm
- Pamphletism against Tragedy
- Happiness from Unhappiness as the Primordial Cause of Determinism
- Atheism as the Principle of Publicness
- Death and the Philosophy of Parochialism
- Individualism as the Function of the Parochial Spirit
- Lasting Infantilism of the Parochial Spirit
- 1. Ingenious Madness
- 2. The End of the World
- 3. Infantile-Romantic Mythology of Glorious Destruction
- 4. Psychology, Theater of the “Youth”
- Realism as Tribal Sacrifice to Deified Reality
- Banality – The First Principle of Nothingness
- Sensationalism – The Second Principle of Nothingness
- Nihilism of The Dark Country
- Nihilism of the Parochial Philosophy and Language
- 1. Nihilism of the “Total” World
- 2. Nihilism of the Status Quo
- 3. Realistic Nihilism
- 4. Aristocratic Nihilism
- 5. Erotic Nihilism
- Disappointment in the Animal
- Autumnal Nocturno and the “Worldly Malice” of the Parochial Spirit
- Existence as Meaningless Work
- Laziness as the Work of the Closed Parochial World
- NaÏvetÉ of the Parochial Spirit’s Non-NaÏvetÉ
- Traditionalism as bad Conscience of a Non-Myth-Building Consciousness
- Political County Fair Staged by Boredom
- In Lieu of a Conclusion: No End to an End
- Notes
- I. The Ideal of Organic Culture
- II. Cyril the Philosopher
- III. Les charmes de l’horreur and the Parochial Spirit
- IV. From God towards Kin
- V. Entropy of Earth as the Entropy of the Final Response
- VI. Existence as “Starry Acting”
- VII. Experience of Poet Nastasijevic
- VIII. Sincerity in the Service of Hatred Towards the Genius
- IX. Biological Irrationalism – The Future of the Cult of Form
- X. “Dead Sweetheart” of the Parochial Spirit and Pornography
- XI. Poet Vladislav Petkovic “Dis”
- XII. Spirit-People against the Spirit
- XIII. Serbian Nazism
- Evil as Rejection of the Evil of Contradiction
- The Poetics of Serbian Nazism
- Serbian Nazism and Language
- 1. Totalitarianism and Language Reform
- 2. Attitude of Serbian Nazism towards Language
- Notes
- Works Cited
